


Open Doors

by Sonora



Series: Heads in Boxes [4]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, between the last fic and the next
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2742626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reddington finds out about Ressler.  </p><p>Aram can't understand why he cares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Doors

“And what do we have here? Quilting bee? A book club, perhaps? I know Twilight and Mists of Avalon are always popular options, but I could point you in the direction of some delightful amateur publishing with far better sex scenes involving...”

“Did you want something, Reddington?”

“We do have work here.”

Aram sits down over his sneakers, pausing in his work for a moment. Their pet criminal is never this short - or this direct. Not with Keen. Ever.

“I can see that. Busy busy, aren’t we, Agent Navabi?”

“Director Cooper requested that I move into Agent Keen’s office. It’s far more efficient than working in separate spaces.”

“Yes, that makes perfect sense,” Reddington replies, and Aram has to actually move, sitting back against the wall as the other man comes around the edge of the desk and - uninvited and unwelcome as always - sits down in Ressler’s chair. Those keen eyes flick over him; Aram looks away. He hates being the focus of this man’s attention, his black heart. “I believe Agent Keen already had a officemate. Is he moving in with you?”

Aram bites his tongue. He'd been against this whole thing; seemed downright disrespectful to be moving Ressler out of the office, away from his desk, so soon. Even if he had been snatched, like everyone thought.  But Internal Affairs had already confiscated his computer and the case she'd been working on returned to the filing system.  After that, there hadn't been much of anything to take out.  An empty bottle for prescription pain meds.  A photo of him and that girlfriend of his, the one who'd died, face down in the lowest drawer.  Office supplies.  Nothing other than that, not even a framed diploma or spare set of handcuffs.

The weird part was - and Liz had agreed with him on this - it didn't look like Ressler had wiped the space, taken things out.  "I never realized how little of himself he had here," she'd admitted, when Director Cooper had them clean out the rest of his personal effects. Straight into storage, which is probably where all his belongings from his apartment will go; his lease is up in two months.

Empty space. All that’s left of Ressler is empty space, and - to Aram’s eyes, anyway - nobody seems to care. But he, he can’t forget the way Ressler looked on the way out, the sad tilt to Ressler’s smile, Ressler’s voice, as he’d said goodbye that Thursday. And Aram tried to call him, at the time, since, but there’s just nothing.

There’s just silence.

Aram blinks, and realizes Reddington is looking at him. “What, me? I don’t even have an office. I sit in the IT room unless there’s something that needs my attention, then I’m out on the floor.”

Reddington folds his hands up on an upturned knee. “Yes, that would pose a problem, wouldn’t it?” His voice hardens. “So where’s my favorite punchline gone?” 

Navabi and Keen exchange a glance. Aram just sighed.

“Did nobody tell you?” Keen finally says, incredulity in her voice.

“Tell me what?” 

“Agent Ressler... he’s been missing for like three weeks.”

The reaction is... well, the reaction is unexpected. 

Reddington just goes very, very quiet.

Then pulls out his phone.

“Missing for three weeks,” he repeats slowly. “So, that was before the Assistant Director redecorated your little lock box in red?”

Aram twitches, not wanting to remember that. The sight of it, the stench of the clean-up that’s permeated every square inch of the Post Office... 

Keen folds her arms, squarely up beside Navabi. Aram does have to hand that one to Director Cooper; these two work as a team, feeding each other. Ressler used to put the brakes on when they needed to be put on. Navabi’s probably going to just grease ‘em. “Yeah,” she replies.

“He wasn’t here for that?” Reddington says, eyes on Keen but thumb moving across the buttons on the outdated flip phone. “Surely he was here...”

“He’s been missing since the Monday before last...”

“No, he’s been missing since four Thursdays ago. Almost a month,” Aram interjects from the floor, drawing everyone attention. It hits fast; he feels himself flush a little from the attention. 

Reddington cocks his head. “Explain.”

“Cooper gave him a couple days off, after the Scimitar mess. But he didn’t show up the next Monday,” Keen says.

“I meant Aram,” Reddington says.

And yeah. Aram has never, ever heard him be this short with Agent Keen.

Trips him up, really.

Especially because he doesn’t want to get into what he what he knows. Or thinks he knows. Suspects, actually; Ressler hasn’t returned his calls.

“I, umm, I saw him on his way out, that Thursday, as he was leaving.”

“And what?”

Aram huffs, shrugs. “I don’t know. He wasn’t right.”

“Wasn’t right?” Reddington echoes.

“No, he wasn’t right.”

Keen holds out a hand. “We have been over all of this. With Cooper, with Internal Affairs, everyone. He didn’t take anything from his apartment, we still haven’t found his car... he was snatched.”

“He walked,” Aram says, for what has to be the hundredth time. “He got up, he walked out of here, and he had no intention of coming back.”

Navabi, largely silent, just shakes her head. “Aram, you’re imagining...”

And there she goes, punching right into that wellspring of frustration and guilt that’s been flooding him since he realized what had happened. He’s lied to IA now, twice, even though telling them everything he knows would get everyone to stop treating him like some little boy with a fantasy. 

If Ressler wanted to leave, if Ressler needed to leave, then the least he can do is not turn the FBI onto the man’s tail.

Aram can’t help but feel guilty - horribly, horribly guilty, for ignoring one of his teammates so long they up and fucking _ran_.

“I have to hook up your computer, Navabi, I do not have to take your condescension!” he snaps.

In the silence that follows, Reddington pushes out of the chair that used to belong Agent Ressler. The wheels squeak on the floor. His face is like ice.

He doesn’t say a word.

He doesn’t come back.

+++++

Aram doesn’t think anything more of the weird encounter with Reddington. Not that day, not on the drive home.

He’s actually thinking about heating up that leftover Dominos pepperoni supreme in his fridge, when his door’s opened from the inside and he’s yanked inside, propelled into a chair.

And Dembe’s got a gun on him before he can so much as protest.

So he does the prudent thing - keeps his hands up, tries to keep his heartbeat down as panic floods his bloodstream with adrenalin. 

“What do you want?”

“That’s what I like about you, Agent Mojtabai. Very direct and to the point. No beating around the bush.”

He swallows as Reddington sits down on his coffee table, a small thumbdrive in hand. “So? What?”

“Have you ever had a dog run away, Aram?”

“What?”

“A dog, did you ever have a dog as a child that got away from you?”

“Umm...” He swallows. “We had a cat once. Duke Fluffypaws, umm, my sister named her, my little sister...” Dembe coughs, shifts, and Aram tries to get back on subject. It’s hard; his brain tends to start skipping when he’s nervous. “Umm, anyway, yeah we had a cat that didn’t come home one night, which is kind of a similar situation to Agent Ressler, I suppose, since he didn’t come home but...”

“The point I was trying to make,” Reddington says, more curt even than usual, “is that the national databases for missing animals aren’t all that comprehensive, but at least we have sub-dermal chips to help keep things moving.” He nods to Dembe, and Dembe backs, gun lowered.

Reddington continues. “I checked on what Director Cooper has listed for Agent Ressler’s little disappearing act. Even as an FBI agent who’s the subject of a possible kidnapping, the priority assigned to his file is low and coverage is far from comprehensive. Chances of finding him that way are almost zero, short of a body turning up.” He pauses. “You think he walked, though, correct?”

Aram nods, feeling a little more steady now. “Yeah,” he says, gripping the arm of his couch for extra support. “I do.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s been off. Because Cooper’s been sidelining him, letting Navabi pick up a lot of the field work with Keen, keeping him on the desk.”

“Why?”

“I guess cause of his girlfriend, I don’t know. I don’t think he ever really got past it. He hasn’t been right in a long time.”

Reddington nods. “Why would he leave?”

And Aram’s thought about this; he owes Ressler that much, a sympathetic hearing. “Umm, Post Office morale’s in the toilet anyway, more desk work in some other field office isn’t appealing... I don’t know, working with you.”

“Interesting,” Reddington says, and hands Aram the thumb drive. “I need you to do something for me, something to help us find Agent Ressler.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s an alias I built for him on that little magic stick. Name, credentials, everything one needs to construct a believable human being in cyber space, but more importantly, photos.”

“Photos?”

“We’re not going to catch him as a missing person. That’s passive collection, and it’ll only work within US borders. We need to set him up as a fugitive, and get INTERPOL involved.” Reddington brushes a bit of non-existent dust off his vest. “Frankly, I can’t believe Harold didn’t think of it.”

Aram stares at the drive. “You built him an alias? He won’t be using that, you know. He’s too smart.”

“Doesn’t matter. We just need his face attached to something serious enough for him to get picked up for.”

He shakes his head, and tries to hand the drive back. “I’d love to help you, Mister Reddington, but you know, Don’s a friend and I don’t want to...”

“I can have Dembe shoot you, if you want to maintain the moral high ground,” Reddington says, not a trace of his usual humor in his voice. “But he’s had some issues with his marksmanship lately. I can’t promise you he won’t hit your kneecap. I hear those are a bear to replace.”

Curling his fingers around the drive, Aram nods, hating himself. “What did he, this alias, do?”

Reddington shrugs. “I’ll leave that up to you. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, serious enough for him to become even more of a target than he already is.”

“Of course not.”

“Good man,” Reddington says, and crosses his legs, like he’s settling in for a long night. “Dembe, would you go get Aram’s laptop and that external encrypted wireless device he keeps under the bed and thinks nobody knows about? We’ve got some government computer systems to hack.”

“Nobody calls it hacking. And it's not really hacking if I've more or less got access to the system,” Aram grumbles, torn between wanting to be pissed off at Reddington for pulling a weapon on him, and wanting to hug the man for believing him about where Ressler's gone. “I was looking forward to eating. Can I go heat up some pizza?”

“Dembe, heat the man up a couple slices of pizza.. I presume it’s in his fridge. If there are any extra, I’d love one myself. You don’t mind, do you, Aram?”

“Not at all,” Aram sighs, and stares at the thumb drive. What the hell is going on? Why the hell does Reddington even care? Ressler tried to kill him on a couple of different occasions in the past, didn't he? “So who’s this alias?”

“A fine State Department paper pusher by the name of Donald Irvington.”

**Author's Note:**

> Getting this out of the way so I can concentrate on the big story. And writing things from Reddington's perspective is frigging hard, so I'm not doing it here


End file.
